System and Method for a Surface-Optimized Tactile Transducer

Abstract

A method for processing an audio input for tactile transduction, comprising the steps of: determining for a mount surface a tactile resonance based on the recognized surface characteristic of the mount surface by a resonance sensor within a housing; and controlling an intensity of an actuator coupled to a weight within the housing for generating the tactile sound derived from the controlled housing in contact with the mount surface, said control in synchronization with on-screen content and intensity-matched to the recognized surface characteristic for enhanced immersion.

We claim: 
     
         1 . A system for generating a tactile sound based on a mount surface characteristic, said system comprising:
 a housing further comprising:
 a resonance sensor; 
 an actuator; 
 a processor; 
 a memory element coupled to the processor; 
 a program executable by the processor and configured to:
 recognize at least one mount surface characteristic input received by the resonance sensor from the mount surface; 
 determine a resonance matched to the recognized surface characteristic of the mount surface; and 
 control an intensity of an actuator for generating the tactile sound in synchronization with on-screen content and matched to the determined resonance. 
 
   
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the housing further comprises a weight coupled to the actuator for generating the tactile sound. 
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the housing further comprises a voice coil for generating the sound waves. 
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 3 , wherein the voice coil is piezoelectric crystals yielding impedance signals that coincide with the sound waves. 
     
     
         5 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the mount surface characteristic input is defined as the difference between a freely vibrating sensor resonance frequency and the resonance frequency measured when the sensor makes contact to the mount surface. 
     
     
         6 . The system of  claim 5 , wherein the differences in frequency is measured as a Deltaf and reflects at least one physical property of the mount surface. 
     
     
         7 . The system of  claim 6 , wherein the at least one physical property of the mount surface is an acoustic impedance. 
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising an a/v recognition block that tags at least one event for scoring by at least one of, motion, color or sound. 
     
     
         9 . The system of  claim 8 , wherein the a/v recognition block determines a pixel color score of the tagged event for controlling the intensity of the actuator. 
     
     
         10 . The system of  claim 8 , wherein the a/v recognition block determines a pixel velocity score of the tagged event for controlling the intensity of the actuator. 
     
     
         11 . The system of  claim 8 , wherein the a/v recognition block determines an audio score of the tagged event for controlling the intensity of the actuator. 
     
     
         12 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a conversion block applying a scoring rule, wherein any of a tagged and scored event is a threshold-grade scored event, and said threshold-grade scored event is converted into a tactile output command by the tactile conversion block. 
     
     
         13 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the housing is flying-saucer in shape with a means of fastening to the mount surface. 
     
     
         14 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a feed-forward and, or back-propagated neural network trained to trigger a tactile output based on any one of, or combination of, a stored data input, stored tagged event, stored coefficient value, stored event proximity score value, stored pixel color score value, stored pixel velocity score value, stored audio score value, tactile recognized mount surface characteristic, and/or output command. 
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 10 , further comprising the feed-forward and, or back-propagated neural network to use a series of externally captured buffers containing known audio-visual sources to aid in real-time recognition of the audio and video input by using a probabilistic approach to determine presence in a captured buffer. 
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of housings networked together for an orchestrated tactile effect across the mount surface. 
     
     
         17 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the weight disposed within the housing may be replaced with a varying weight. 
     
     
         18 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the mount surface is at least one of a table top, chair bottom, chair backrest, keyboard, game controller, and/or mouse. 
     
     
         19 . A method for processing an audio input for tactile transduction, said method comprising the steps of:
 determining for a mount surface a tactile resonance based on the recognized surface characteristic of the mount surface by a resonance sensor within a housing; and   controlling an intensity of an actuator coupled to a weight within the housing for generating the tactile sound derived from the controlled housing in contact with the mount surface, said control in synchronization with on-screen content and intensity-matched to the recognized surface characteristic for enhanced immersion.   
     
     
         20 . A method for processing an audio input for tactile transduction, said method comprising the steps of:
 selecting for a mount surface type; and   controlling an intensity of an actuator coupled to a weight within a housing for generating the tactile sound derived from the controlled housing in contact with a mount surface, said control in synchronization with on-screen content and intensity-matched to the selected mount surface type.